Quantum Leap: A Leap Ahead
by Kal-El2k9
Summary: Sam awakes from a coma to find that everything that has happened to him since he started Leaping was all an elaborate dream. Now he faces a reality in which all of his life's accomplishments have never happened.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter One

Boulder, Colorado

1975

"She's this way, Sam!"

Sam followed the sound of Carrie's voice to the end of the tunnel. The light was so dim in this part of the cavern that he could barely make out the shapes of his feet as he methodically made his way. The sweat from his hands created a grease feeling as he slid them along the rock wall. He knew that if he slipped right now that there would be no way for him to get a grip on anything. All he could hope for was that the level surface that he was on right now would hold out for a few more minutes.

He came around a corner and saw Carrie. It was a little unnerving to see her so brightly lit up even though the light in the cave was almost nothing. He had gotten used to it over the years. After all, he knew that she was not really there. She was in the imaging chamber which had plenty of light.

"Sam," she exclaimed when she saw him. "She's right there!"

"Can you put a light on her?" Sam asked.

Carrie held up her hand link and pressed a few buttons. There was a beeping noise and then a beam of light burst from the device and shone like a perfect spotlight across the cave. It lit up an area in a corner where a little girl sat curled up into a fetal position. She was whimpering silently. She did not hold her hands up or try to protect her eyes from the light at all.

"Is it too bright?" Sam asked.

"She can't see it," Carrie answered. "It's part of my imaging matrix."

Sam nodded and slowly moved toward the little girl. "Sarah?"

The girl stopped crying for a moment and looked up. She was startled by the sudden sound of Sam's voice. It looked strange to see her looking around blindly in the dark with such a bright light illuminating everything around her.

"Uncle Walt?" she called back. "Is that you?"

"It's me, honey," Sam said. "Are you hurt?"

"I'm cold," she said.

"Hypothermia is starting to set in, Sam," Carrie said. She must have been running a bio scan on the girl with her hand link. "She doesn't appear to have any broken bones or other injuries."

Sam nodded at the hologram and turned back to Sarah. "How did you get all the way down here? The tour doesn't come this deep in to the cave."

"I thought that I heard a waterfall," the girl replied. "I wanted to see it."

"She's talking about Clara falls," Carrie said. "That waterfall has been closed to the public for about ten years because the ground around it is too unstable. It's only another thirty meters west of here. The water there is nearly three hundred feet deep." Carrie looked up from her hand link and Sam recognized the look of horror on her face. He had seen it many times over the years. "Sam, if you had not gotten here when you did then she might not have ever been found."

"Its okay," Sam said to both Sarah and Carrie at the same time. "I'm here now. You're going to be fine."

Sam had finally made it to the little girl's side and gently picked her up into his arms. She hugged him tightly around the neck and he began the journey of following Carrie back to safety.

When they emerged from the mouth of the cave there was an entire group of men carrying flashlights, rope, and water getting ready to head inside. One look at him carrying the child and everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

"Sarah!"

Sam set the girl down on the ground just as her mother got close enough to swoop in and pull her back up again. There was a mixture of gratitude and chastisement with a whole lot of hugs. The woman turned to him with tears filling her eyes.

"I didn't even know that she was gone!" she said. "What is wrong with me?"

Sam pulled Sarah from the woman's arms and sent her away with a paramedic to be checked out. He knew that Carrie had originally told him that his mission had involved Sarah. History recorded that she went missing and was never found. He had fixed that. But his years of Leaping experience told him that there was another wrong to right here. He looked over the woman's shoulder at Carrie who was busy punching information into her hand link.

"You saved her life as well, Sam," Carrie said. "Originally she committed suicide about three months after Sarah's disappearance. She'll live now." But Sam could see on the young girl's face that there was more to it than that. And he could also tell that she knew that he wasn't buying it. "The state takes the child away from her two weeks from now because of her alcohol abuse."

Sam looked at the woman who was still staring at her with tear filled eyes.

"Terri," he said. "You've got to get hold of yourself. You're going to lose that little girl!"

"What?" the woman asked. She clearly had not expected his reaction to be so harsh.

"I'm sorry, sis," he said. "I can't tell you how I know, but Sarah will be taken from you if you don't quit drinking."

Terri broke down and burst into heaving sobs of sadness. Sam put his arms around her and helped her sit down on a bench. The crew that had been standing around staring began to spread out and move away from them, though there were a few lingering stares in their direction.

"I don't know what to do, Walt," she said between gasps. "Ever since Daniel died I've just..."

"You just stopped," Sam said. "You've stopped trying."

She nodded. "I didn't mean to."

"I know you didn't," he replied. "But you've got to try again. Sarah is your life and if you lose her I'm afraid of what will happen to you."

"I need help," Terri said.

Sam looked at Carrie.

"If you're wanting to know if Walt will be there to help her then the answer is yes," the young woman said. "For a while at least. Walt doesn't die until January of 2009."

"I'll help you," Sam said. He took both of her hands into his and smiled. "We'll do it together." She hugged him tightly and kissed him on the cheek.

"You're the best big brother that a girl could hope for," Terri said.

"Go be with your daughter," he replied. The woman got up and walked toward the ambulance where Sarah had been taken. Sam got up and stood next to Carrie. "How does it work out?"

"Sarah is still taken out of Terri's custody but it is only temporary while Terri is in a rehabilitation clinic for six weeks. After that there is not much recorded. Sarah grows up to be a geologist and at some time Terri even earns a degree as a botanist."

Sam smiles. He looked at Carrie. The young girl who had been with him all along his journey. He had vague recollections of another time stream where she had not been his companion. He still remembered Al, even though he knew that he was the only one who did. For some reason when his own timeline was changed he could remember both the way things were unfolding now and the way they had once been.

"You're doing a great job, Carrie," Sam said. "You really helped me out down there."

Carrie gave him a curious smile. "Why do you do that?"

Sam looked bewildered. "Do what?"

"You're constantly commenting on my abilities as if you're surprised at them," she said. "I've been doing this for a while, you know."

"Do I?" Sam asked. "How long have you been doing this?"

"Since your first Leap," Carrie replied.

"And how long ago was that?" Sam asked.

Carrie smiled. "You're not going to trick me into giving you information that you're not supposed to have."

"Why can't you tell me when my first Leap was?" Sam asked.

Carrie regained her professional demeanor. "You first stepped into the Quantum Leap Accelerator on August 1, 1999."

"Right," Sam said. "And this is 1975. So what good does that do me?"

"Sam, you know that your memory is full of gaps," Carrie said. "I'm not supposed to help fill in those gaps. You wrote the rules."

"No," Sam said. "Al wrote the rules and Gushi follows them."

"Admiral Calavicci had nothing to do with making the rules for Leaping," Carrie said. "All he did was gain us the initial funding. We've talked about this."

"Why haven't I Leaped?" Sam said with some frustration.

"The timeline is adjusting," she replied. "You should be Leaping any second."

"Maybe I can actually go home this time," Sam said.

"One can always hope," Carrie replied. Sam got the feeling that they had discussed that as well.

"Well, I think fifteen years is enough," he said.

Carrie shot him a look of disbelief. "What did you say?"

"I said that fifteen years was..." he trailed off as he realized what she had heard. "How did I know that?"

"Sam," Carrie said. But he did not hear what she was going to say. He felt the familiar vibration begin to tingle through his body and his vision filled with a brilliant blue light.

Sam Beckett Leaped.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

New Mexico

September 17, 1999

Whenever Sam felt the Leap take over, he always just let himself go and be taken by it. It was as if he were adrift in the ocean with nothing to hold onto. During his first days after stepping into the accelerator he had felt as if he were drowning and he would fight it. He continued to do this for years until he realized that Leaping was not going to kill him. His mind was being ripped out of reality but it was always going to be put back down somewhere.

After a while he thought that he could try to steer himself. Maybe if he fought the current that was pushing him through time just enough he could direct himself to go where he wanted. But eventually he realized that there was a reason behind the places that he went and he decided that he would just let it take him where he wanted.

_"It isn't God, Time, or Fate that's been Leaping you, Sam."_

The words echoed in his mind all of the time. His swiss-cheesed memory prevented him from remembering where they came from most of the time. But here, in the in-between, he could remember everything with perfect clarity. Every detail from every Leap that he had ever done was suddenly very vivid once he was enveloped.

_"It isn't God, Time, or Fate that's been Leaping you, Sam."_ The old desert bartender, Al, had told him. _"It's you."_

And as soon as he had heard the words he knew that it was true. After that, he no longer had been a slave to random Leaps. He could go anywhere and be anyone that he wanted. He could correct big moments in history or just take a break for a while if he wanted.

But most of the time he just let himself go. He allowed himself to be carried by the currents of time and let them drop him where they may. He found that he liked the unpredictable circumstances that he would suddenly find himself in.

He felt the familiar sensation of his body coming back together as he dropped out of the ether and back into a solid piece of reality. The blue light coalesced and then quickly drew itself off of him like water running back into the ocean and leaving him lying on the beach.

As soon as he could tell that the Leap was complete he felt a sudden throbbing pain hit him square in the temples. He had his eyes closed tight. He tried to open them but the light in the room made the pain worse. He pulled an arm up over his face to block out as much light as possible.

"He's waking up," he heard a woman's voice say.

"Give him the morphine," a man's voice responded. "He's going to have a huge headache."

A moment later Sam could feel the pain easing and he breathed a sigh of relief. He slowly and carefully opened his eyes and looked around him. After hearing the word "morphine" he had expected to find himself in a hospital. However, this looked more like a sparse clinic or just some sort of first aid room. He was lying on a gurney with a device on his finger to monitor his life signs. The room was only about ten feet both ways and there were cabinets with first aid equipment lining the room.

"That's better."

Sam gave a polite smile to the blurry figure that the voice belonged to. The image slowly came together and he saw that it was a young woman in her late twenties. She was holding a clipboard and smiling back at him.

"You gave us quite a scare," she said.

"I'm sorry," he replied. This was the hardest part of a Leap. The part right at the beginning when he had to carry on conversations with people before he had found out who he was or even what year it was. "I don't really remember much of what happened."

"There's no need to remember right now," the man said. He was older than the woman by about twenty years. He was entering some information into a small computer terminal by the door and he turned to speak to him. "You've been out for about six hours. You bumped your head pretty hard. Right now you don't need to do anything but rest."

"How did I bump my head?" Sam asked.

"There's going to be a briefing on the matter in the morning," the woman said. "You'll be taken to the conference room before it starts. You should be cleared to walk on your own by then."

Sam looked at her and then looked down at the floor. He closed his eyes for a moment.

"Am I in a military installation?" he asked.

The woman's smile faded. "Doctor," she said to the other man. "There's significant amnesia."

The man rolled over to Sam on the little office chair that he was sitting in and pulled a scope from his coat pocket. He shined a little light into each of Sam's eyes.

"I don't think it's anything to worry about," the doctor said. He turned and looked at the woman. "You'd better let the Admiral know that he's awake. And let him know that he's going to have some questions."

The woman nodded. She moved to the door and it slid open on its own. He had not seen a door like that in years. The woman turned and smiled at him again.

"Everything is going to be just fine," she said. "I'll see you in the morning, Dr. Beckett."

She turned and left and the door slid shut behind her.

At the same time a door opened inside Sam's mind.

Did she just call him Dr. Beckett?

"What did she just call me?" Sam asked the doctor.

The man looked up from his monitor. "She called you by your name. Dr. Sam Beckett."

Sam jumped up off of the bed and began grabbing things off of the shelves and throwing them over his shoulder. The doctor got up tried to force him back onto the bed. Sam pushed him away.

"Dr. Beckett!" the man yelled. "What has come over you?"

"I need a mirror!" Sam screamed back.

The door slid open and there was a young man in a military uniform standing behind it.

"Help the doctor back to his bed," the older man said.

The young man grabbed Sam's arm. Sam took hold of his wrist and flung him around his body and into the wall. The younger man dropped to the floor unconscious.

"A mirror!" Sam yelled.

"There's a restroom across the hall!" the older man said.

Sam ran out of the room and went through a small door on the other side of the narrow hallway.

There was a mirror across the room.

Sam Beckett stared into it.

And Sam Beckett stared back.

"Oh boy," he said.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

"What is the date?"

The older man was standing with his back to the corridor wall as Sam burst back out of the restroom. He was now standing just inches from the man's face. If he had taken a moment to realize that he had just knocked out one of the guards and was now yelling like a mad man he would have seen that the man was terrified. As it was, he just wanted answers. How was he back in his own body after all of these years? How had he come here without even trying? What happened to him to cause him to sustain an injury?

"Dr. Beckett," the man said. "Please!"

"What year is it?" Sam screamed.

"1999," the man answered. "September 17, 1999!"

Sam backed up and leaned against the other wall. It was the same day of his original Leap. This was the day that he had gotten into the accelerator and gotten himself lost in time.

"Why did I Leap here?" he said to himself. He looked up at the ceiling "Carrie! I need you right now! Are you listening?"

"Dr. Beckett," the man said. "Please. Come back in the room and lie down."

"Carrie!" Sam yelled.

"Who is Carrie?" the man asked.

"Who are you?" Sam asked.

"I'm Dr. Callaway," he replied. "I'm the project physician."

"Project?" Sam asked. "Am I at Project Quantum Leap?"

"Yes, of course you are," Callaway responded. "Dr. Beckett...Sam! Everything will be okay. Your memory will come back in a few hours. You just need to rest. Please, come sit down."

Sam stared at the man for a moment and then looked around him at the corridor. He was slowly beginning to realize that he recognized his surroundings. He ran his fingers along the wall.

"I'm in the medical wing," Sam said. "There are three treatment rooms, a sleep ward, and an emergency operating room in this hallway."

Callaway sighed with relief. "That's right."

"If I go down this hallway and take the elevator up two floors I would come to the staff living quarters. One floor above that and I'd be in the office area. Conference rooms, cubicles, things like that."

Callaway nodded.

"Three floors down from here is where Ziggy is located," Sam said. "And the accelerator."

"I told you that you'd get your memory back," the doctor said. "In a couple more hours you'll probably remember what happened earlier."

"I hope so," a female voice said from around the corner. The two men turned just in time to see a young woman in her mid thirties enter the corridor. She looked up at Sam and shook her head. "Because I would love to know what the hell you were thinking."

"Dr. Beeks," Callaway said. "I was about to call you to tell you that Dr. Beckett was awake. We had a little trouble."

"I heard," Verbena Beeks replied. "Security was called." She looked over at the young soldier still sprawled across the patient room floor. "Dr. Callaway, I need you to see to the guard. I'll escort Dr. Beckett to another room."

Callaway jumped up as if he had just realized that there was an injured young man a few feet away. "Of course!" he said.

Verbena turned back to Sam and motioned to another room down the hallway. He followed her direction and went into another room. This one looked exactly like the other one except that the shelves and the gurney had both swapped to the opposite walls. Sam sat down on the bed and looked up at the doctor.

"So, you're having some issues with your memory," she said. "Do you know who I am?"

"Verbena Beeks," he replied. "Your the project psychologist."

"That's right," she said.

"And we're friends," Sam said. He did not know why he said that part other than the fact that the information presented itself in his mind.

"Yes," she said. "We are. We've been friends for a long time."

"Tell me what happened to me," Sam said. "Where is Carrie? Why did I Leap into my own body? Why am I not in the Waiting Room?"

Verbena held up a hand as if to stop the flow of questions. She looked at him with more questions in her eyes than he felt even he had.

"What are you talking about, Sam?" she asked. "What is the Waiting Room?"

"That's where the people that I Leap into go while I put right whatever wrong I'm there to correct," he replied.

"The people that you Leap into?" she asked. "What does that mean? Sam, you haven't Leaped anywhere. The experiment was not successful."

"What?"

Verbena sat down on the gurney next to him and put one of her hands on top of his.

"Sam," she said. "You heard that the funding was being pulled from the project. You thought that if you could have a successful Leap that it would change the board's mind. You got into the accelerator but it overloaded and you passed out. You fell off of the platform and hit your head. You've been unconscious for the past six hours."

Sam felt his mouth drop open and he just stared at her for a long time.

"That isn't possible," Sam said.

"It's exactly what happened, Sam," she replied. "What are all of these other things that you're talking about? Who is Carrie?"

"Al," Sam said. "Is Al here?"

"He's been on the phone with the Pentagon for hours," she replied. "He's on his way down now. He should be here in a few minutes."

"Really?" Sam asked. "I haven't seen him in ten years."

"Sam, you saw Al this afternoon," she said.

"Verbena," Sam said. "If I tell you what actually happened then you have to promise not to tell me that my brain got fried or that I'm delusional."

"Sam Beckett," she said. "You are the head scientist on this project and the most brilliant mind that I have ever known. I would never think that you were delusional."

"Okay," Sam said. "The experiment was not a failure. But it did more than just send me back in time. I became another person. I've been gone from here for nearly fifteen years Leaping into hundreds of people and fixing things in their lives. I finally came home but I'm back on the day that I started instead of where I should be."

"Where you should be?" Verbena asked.

"Yeah," Sam replied. "If I Leaped on this day then I estimate that the present should be sometime between late 2012 to mid 2013."

"Sam," Verbena said. "That's not what happened."

"I know," Sam said. "You're going to tell me that I fell and hit my head and that I'm remembering things that didn't happen. Where is Carrie?"

"I don't know anyone named Carrie," Verbena responded.

"That doesn't make any sense," Sam said. "She the second person in charge of the entire project."

"Sam, you are the project director," she replied. "The second in command is Al."

"What?" Sam said. "I mean, that's the way it was before but that all got changed."

"Changed?" she asked.

"Well, yeah," Sam replied. "I mean, the things that I do in the past change the present all of the time. That's just one of the big ones."

"If you changed history then why would you still remember the way it was before?" she asked.

"I don't know," Sam said. "Its got to do with me being the one that changed it. It's like I create a barrier around myself when time changes. I remember it both ways."

"Okay," she said calmly. "Well, I can tell you that there is no one on the senior staff of this facility by the name of Carrie."

Sam sat with his head buried in his hands for a few minutes. After what seemed like hours he slowly lifted his face and rubbed his hands across his eyes.

"That means that it never happened."

"I'm sorry?" Verbena asked.

"I was assuming that I Leaped into myself in the past," Sam said. "I thought that _this_ was the past. But if what you're telling me is true...if Carrie was never here...that means that I never Leaped to begin with."

"That's exactly what I'm trying to tell you," Verbena said. "You haven't been anywhere Sam. You haven't been gone for fifteen years. You've been right here. And its only been six hours."

Sam closed his eyes.

"I think I need to lay down," he said.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

Sam lay quietly in the dark patient room. The only light reaching his eyes was the light from the hallway that was creeping underneath the door. Verbena had agreed to let him rest for a few minutes before having to deal with what was happening to him.

But what _was_ happening to him? Was he insane? Could it actually be that he had years of memories of things that had not actually taken place? If that were so then why were the memories so vivid? He could remember every detail of what had happened to him since he started Leaping.

That fact in itself was a miracle. Ever since he had first started Leaping around in time he had been plagued by a certain type of amnesia. He could remember the important things about himself such as his name and where he was born. But there were huge gaps that would fill in occasionally and then fall out again. Things like how old he was when his father passed away, where he had met Al for the first time, and details of the project seemed to fade in and out. It was a phenomenon that he and Al had always referred to as the "swiss cheese" effect.

But now, lying on this gurney in a compound buried underneath the New Mexico desert in the year 1999, he had no gaps in his memory. He knew everything. He knew every detail about the project. He knew everything about every person that he had become on his journey. He even thought that if he sat down and thought about it he could figure out why he had started becoming other people in the first place instead of just traveling in time which was his original intent.

"What if it didn't happen?" Sam asked himself in the darkness. And he continued to ask himself the same thing in his mind. What if everything that had happened to him over the past 15 years had been nothing more than a dream brought on by a concussion?

That was the other thing that was getting to him. How did he know that it had been 15 years? Bouncing around in time did not make it easy to keep up with a calendar. It might be noon and then he would Leap and it would be the middle of the night. Plus the fact that what seemed like an instant between Leaps to him was actually days or even weeks in the present. He should have no concept of actual time. Even so, he found that he was absolutely positive that his present should be fourteen to fifteen years later than where he actually found himself.

The door slid open and a shaft of light filled the room. He sat up on the bed and held a hand up to shield his eyes. There was a figure standing there that was silhouetted by the light from the hallway.

"Lights," the figure said. The lights came on in the room and Sam found that he was staring at a man that at one time had been his best friend in the world.

"Al!" he said. He jumped up and wrapped his arms around the man's body and squeezed him.

"Okay," Al said. "Okay, Sam. Geez! What has gotten into you?"

Sam pulled back but he could not erase the grin that was sprawled across his face. He put his hands on Al's shoulder and poked his chest with his finger.

"I can touch you," Sam said.

"Yeah," Al replied. "I'd appreciate it if you'd stop."

"Sorry," Sam said. "It's just...I haven't seen you in..."

Al interrupted. "Dr. Beeks told me. She said that you think that you haven't seen me in something like ten years. Sam, you've got to get a hold on yourself."

"No, Al," Sam said. "This isn't like when I was in the insane asylum. I know what I'm talking about."

"Insane asylum?" Al said. "You've never been in one of those."

Sam nodded. Of course. He was thinking about one of his Leaps.

"Look," Al said. "We've got to go to the committee in the morning and tell them what happened. They're probably going to pull the funding."

"I know," Sam said. "That's why I got into the accelerator."

"Because you wanted to show them that it worked?" Al asked. Sam nodded. "But it didn't."

"I don't know," Sam said. "I think it did. I remember it working. But then again, I can't explain why I'm here."

"Okay," Al said. He motioned to the bed and told Sam to sit down. He pulled a folding chair over and sat down across from him, placing his uniform hat in his lap. He sighed. "The last thing that we need is for you to go in there and start telling them wild stories. Why don't you tell me what's going on in that brain of yours so we can figure it out."

Sam took a deep breath. "I got into the accelerator on this day in 1999. It was supposed to allow me to time travel to different points within my lifetime."

"I know all of that," Al said.

"Okay. Well, I was enveloped in this blue light and I lost consciousness. When I woke up I was in the past but I was someone else. I was Tom Stratton. He was a test pilot in the Air Force back in the 50s."

Al opened his mouth but then took a breath and closed it.

"I know it sound crazy, Al," Sam said.

"Well, if you had asked me a few years ago I would have told you that the whole idea of time travel was crazy," Al said. "But there is nothing in your theory that would make it possible to become another person."

"I know that," Sam said.

"Okay," Al said. "What happened then?"

"Well, its a long story," Sam said. "We figured out that the only chance that I had to get back was to fix something in Tom's life that had originally gone wrong. But when I did that I didn't come back. I Leaped into someone else."

"And you were lost in time," Al said.

"Right," Sam replied.

"How did you know what you were supposed to change?" Al asked.

"You told me," Sam said.

"Me? I didn't go back in time."

"You used the imaging chamber," Sam replied.

Al nodded. "So, I was a hologram. A lot of people throughout history must have looked at you like you were nuts since you looked like you were talking to yourself."

"Kind of the way you're looking at me now," Sam said. "I don't know how to make you believe me, Al. I can't prove what happened but I know that I'm telling the truth."

"I know that you're telling the truth," Al said. "I believe that you think that this actually happened to you. But we've got to find out why." He stood up and dusted off his coat. "Get some sleep, Sam. I'll be back in a few hours so we can go meet with the committee."

"Why is the committee in charge?" Sam asked.

"What are you talking about?" Al asked. "They've always been in charge."

"But I changed..." Sam trailed off.

"What is it?" Al asked.

"Does my wife work at the project?" he replied.

Al shook his head. "No. She's a teacher. Why?"

"Another one of my Leaps," Sam said. "I remember changing history so that she was in charge of the project while I was gone and the committee had nothing to do with the funding."

"You really were dreaming," Al said with a smile. Sam returned it. "Good night, Sam."

That night Sam slept but it was not restful. He had nightmares continuously throughout the night. He woke up a few times but mostly he drifted in a state between sleep and wakefulness. Surprisingly, the nightmare that he had was the same that he had been having for years. But tonight it was worse. It was as if the clarity had been turned up and he could swear that it was happening for real.

The dream found him walking through a maze of mirrors. It was like the maze that one would find at a state fair or a town carnival except that this one was huge. The corridors of mirrors stretched out for miles and reached high into the sky above him. Every one of them had a different reflection. He could see Samantha Stormer, Tom Stratton, Jimy LaMotta, and Eddie Brackett to name a few. He was surprised to find that he had no trouble recalling their names this time. Usually it was as if he were seeing someone that he knew he should remember but he could not recall why. As he walked down one of the corridors he looked around at the mirrors. He saw Elvis Presley, Bobo the chimp, and Dr. Ruth.

Then he saw it. Ahead of him at the end of the hallway he could make out a house. It was not as big as the house that he grew up in but it looked comfortable. It was his house. At least, it used to be. He knew that if he walked through that door he would find Donna setting the table for dinner.

It was at this point that in the dream that a voice usually boomed from the sky and told him that it was not yet time and the mirrors would all start to fall on him and envelope him.

This time there was no voice.

The mirrors did not fall.

"What does this mean?" Sam asked. "Are you telling me that it's over? I can rest? Is that what you mean?"

He continued walking toward the house. As he did he looked around him at the mirror. They were not falling or crumbling but he could see now that the faces looking back at him were fading. Some of them had disappeared already. Other ones did not look like they would last much longer. In their place there was nothing but empty space.

"No!" Sam said as the meaning of what he was seeing slowly crept into his mind. "No, don't take them! I need them! They need me! Don't let it all be for nothing!"

The mirrors were empty now and they slowly dissolved until there was nothing around him but empty space and the house in the distance. He screamed.

He woke up screaming.

He felt empty.


End file.
